You're overthinking this. "Is this food packaged and processed with preservatives, a list of 40 ingredients, and has a shelf life of 6 months to 5 years? Then I'm not buying it. Is it meat or product? It's ok." This is referring pretty specifically to Franken-foods, not GMOs (which I too think are a great idea, and essentially optimizing our agricultural practices over the last 20,000-whatever years).

Quick example, my mother-in-law (who is into all kinds of weird "food woo" (she's a drink-raw-milk-only, avoid-adrenal-stressing-foods, etc. kind of person) once handed me a some sort of baked good--a bread perhaps--and mentioned, "It has no preservatives." My quick, honest, reply was "bummer." She had meant to "no preservatives" as being a good thing, as lots of folks do. The thing is, preservatives are a GOOD thing (well, unless you're preserving your food with something known to be harmful). It means less food waste, and that you're less likely to be unknowingly eating (mildly) spoiled food.

We have made missteps in our advancement in the production of food, and we as a whole don't eat as healthy of food as we should, but on the whole, modern agricultural practices are a good thing, as are some modern processing of food that people don't like because it's not "natural." I'm swayed by the preponderance of quality evidence on this, not anecdotes, intuition, and studies that represent noise in the data due to known problems with the generation of data.

Whilst Jack Lalanne's quote 'if man made it don't eat it' is simplistic it's basically saying go for the steak or the bag of salad leaves rather than the corn dog and powdered mash potato.

This isn't about 'weird' foods like raw milk, or taking things to the nth-degree. It's just common sense advice that humans seldom make a food healthier by tinkering with it. As close to its natural form as possible is invariably best.

Does that mean I'm not gonna pepper my cod fillet, of course not. But I sure as heck am not going to buy a pre-battered pack of frozen 'fish fingers' given the choice!

>This isn't about 'weird' foods like raw milk, or taking things to the nth-degree. It's just common sense advice that humans seldom make a food healthier by tinkering with it. As close to its natural form as possible is invariably best.

That's the thing. The first and last sentence of this quote run contrary to each other in the cited example. When we process raw milk by pasteurizing it, we are making it BETTER. We've tinkered with it, to use your word. "As close to its natural form as possible is invariably best" (emphasis added) is not necessarily true. (As an aside, there is nothing "weird" about raw milk other than your lack of exposure to it. I grew up in rural Wisconsin in the 1980s--as a kid, I've had plenty of raw milk. We all did living there. Heck, I used to milk cows and I once tried to see if I could squirt raw milk directly from the teat into my mouth at arms length--it doesn't get much fresher! As an adult, I avoid raw milk because I know better.)

---

Related to battered fish, what's better (from a health standpoint): if you batter your own fish or you buy pre-battered fish? All else equal, most people would still say that as a matter of intuition will say that battering your own is better. If "feels" like the correct answer. But the real answer would be that it depends on what you battered it with and what the company battered it with. The reality is that many people who actively complain about "processed foods" are fine with the processing done as long as they are the ones doing it. Regardless of what the reality may be, a homemade noodle somehow feels healthier than a store bought one to those folks.

(And yes, I realize my battered fish question isn't what your fish example was talking about at all. I just ran with it in a different direction and am not trying to misrepresent what you said).

I have no idea what they are putting into commercially processed foods, how long they are cooked for at what temperature. (Well I have an idea of what goes into chicken nuggets having watched Jamie Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSoiDtdi9s).

I think there's logic to regarding more recent food innovations with greater skepticism. Same with many innovations. Over a shorter time period, the long-term consequences of the innovations have not yet become fully apparent. With things that have been used for thousands of years we can assume that had a long-term issue arisen, the food or practice would likely have been abandoned.

Radium watches, DDT, hydrogenated vegetable oils, ....

The problem is that these simplifications and generalizations are invariably broken. According to this, for example, raw meat should be better than cooked meat.

While true, this isn't because humans are incapable of improving food. It's because the ways our species has been improving food recently have been driven by capitalism; we've been making it easier to grow and giving it more appealing taste so that it's easier to mass produce and sell. These qualities, especially the taste 'improvements', often result in significant reductions in nutritional quality. If Big Aggro were instead focusing on making our veggies more nutritious, I'm confident that they would succeed.

The market is an emergent phenomenon. A market is indeed made up of corporations which is made up of people, but this does not mean that "just made up of people" is an adequate answer.

A carefully carved out subset of an animal that lived on a carefully maintained agricultural plot, fed a precisely calibrated diet, and slaughtered at a precisely chosen time. An animal of a special humans have been breeding and molding for thousands of years.

> bag of salad leaves

Again, species we have been cultivating and changing for so long that we would no longer recognize its original wild form. Lettuce is related to daisies.

> It's just common sense advice that humans seldom make a food healthier by tinkering with it.

That common sense makes no sense, why would we spend effort making things worse for ourselves?

We tinker with things because it improves them. Sure, sometimes we don't discover the long term implications for a while (like with sugar), but in general, we cultivate and process because it makes things better.

Cassava that isn't processed is poisonous, as are many beans. Eating most fish that isn't deep frozen or thoroughly cooked is a good way to get worms. The same would be true for beef and pork too, except that we humans have so carefully managed (tinkered with?) our livestock that we've eliminated most of their parasites.

Given a choice between a package of heavily processed bacon from the grocery store, or a fresh chunk of wild boar meat that you hunted and killed yourself, which is better for you? Well, the latter is a hell of a lot more likely to give you trichinosis.

> As close to its natural form as possible is invariably best.

So, like:

Corn: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/images/relevance/Z_...

Watermelon: https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CRPlJWtfmDnCTNMv02Cx1DSiaws...

> I sure as heck am not going to buy a pre-battered pack of frozen 'fish fingers' given the choice!

That's not because the fish fingers are unnatural, it's because they're made of shitty, cheap ingredients.

Given the choice between, say, a nice cheese (a very heavily processed food involving a number of chemicals and months of human attention) versus finding a wild bee's nest and drinking all the honey, the former would be healthier for you, even assuming you don't get stung.

If you want to eat things that are good for you, "natural", "unprocessed" or "free from human tinkering" are simply not useful signals. They're not even that well-defined.

I get that to many, science is a boogeyman - but come on, we're meant to be better than that on HN, since you know, so many of do actually have science backgrounds?

My parents owned a sheep property growing up, and I went to an agricultural school - the whole point of modern agriculture, and husbandy pratcises is that we do intentional thinks to manipulate animals/plants, to be safer for us.

Oh, and my wife is a veterinarian - and occasionally she gets crazies in, who think they can roadkill or dead wildlife - she's like, yeah, genius, great way to give yourself worms.

And preserved foods is...well, just that - to preserve food.

You know, like pasteurised milk?

Humans have been preserving food for millennia - it's just that our techniques have evolved a bit more than "add salt, let it dry in the sun".

I think many people might be equating junk food (i.e. sweets, chips etc.) with all modern foods - that's a logical fallacy. Food companies optimised for things consumers want - whether that's long shelf-life, for taste, for convenience etc.

We are so incredibly lucky these days - that we have massive range of foodstuff - just make sure you read the food labels, and pick the foods you want.

If convenience, or high-sweetness isn't what you want - then don't buy those products. Buy other products!

Ultimately, corporates aren't some evil faceless entity - nor do I believe there's some mysterious conspiracy going on.

They simply create what they think people will buy - and hence, make them money.

But I agree with parent - the whole "eat stuff that humans haven't touched" is a bit of a stupid argument - it's like romanticising pre-historic men.

In reality - they probably had hard, short lives, and were subject to parasites and infection constantly - a lot of it via the food they ate.

There are a thousand choices you can make when it comes to diet. It's not an all or nothing, democrat or republican, us vs them proposition. What the previous poster was getting at is that typically, for each choice you can make with your diet, a good rule of thumb is that the less processed a food is, the more likely it is to be better for you. That doesn't mean it's always true in every case, or that occasionally a bit of processed food will kill you, or whatever other straw man you are chasing after.

In any case, there IS plenty of science backing up the negative health effects of processed foods:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/eating-too-much-added-sug...

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesit...

http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/22693-highly-processed-food...

http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/news/world-health-organiza...

http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/di...

http://www.ewg.org/research/bpa-canned-food

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/transfats/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra#Side_effects

Plenty of linked studies here as well:

https://authoritynutrition.com/9-ways-that-processed-foods-a...

Do you have any science to back up your claims?

It isn't an all or nothing stance.

And the whole black-and-white "Don't eat processed foods" rule is exactly what I'm arguing against.

I don't think it's a good rule of thumb - you need to actually put some thought and consideration into what you're eating - e.g. read the food labels!

Everybody's personal stance is difference. For example, I eat heaps of "processed foods" - heck, I eat Soylent (https://www.soylent.com/) which is about as processed as you can possibly get.

Please also read the parent I was replying to - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941#

Also, with regard to the articles that you spammed your post with (I assume you just keep a notepad with these around grins):

1. Article 1 (Too much added sugar is bad for you, and can lead to heart disease) - not to put a fine point on it, but no sit sherlock? Like, seriously? It doesn't matter whether it's processed or not (e.g. "natural" sugar, or say, honey), if you drizzle sugar all over your food, to the point of excess, yes, it's going to make you fat and at higher risk of heart disease. 2. Article 2 (Diet Quality) - There are two paragraphs (or clustered paragraphs) that reference "processed" in this article - the first refers to eating less red meat and less processed meat - so yes, I'm guessing that too much "natural" steak, or too much spam isn't great for you. I don't think anybody ever regarded spam as a health food (although I could be wrong, spam was before my time). There are ways to process meat and have it be healthy - the tradeoff, is I suppose you don't get the awesome taste of spam (lol), or the incredibly long shelf-life. The second point is that whole grains are better for you, as they are digested more slowly - you get the full grain, as opposed to just the tasty part. 3. Article 3 (Processed food can be addictive) - Reading the article, we learn that processed foods in this case is code for foods like "chocolate, French Fries, pizza, and ice cream" - umm, I think the point of those foods it that they taste good? As in, nobody ever said, gee, I feel like health food, let me get some of that pizza or ice cream. sigh*. The whole damn point of these foods is that they're engineered to taste food - they're not exactly marketed as "health foods", so it's not exactly like pizza or ice cream companies are misleading you. Also, chocolate is interesting, in that it can be very "natural" - but still very addictive.

I'm not going to go through and decipher/debunk every single one of your articles.

But my point is simple - there's very little in the way of a blanket "don't eat processed foods" in the links you posted.

For some people, they might think it a useful guideline - but I suspect in this case, they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

For myself - I just read the food label, and exercise some common-sense. If it's confectionery, or it's a "treat" food (whether processed or natural - although to be honest, it's more a spectrum of how processed, since nearly any food you can legally buy is processed to some degree), I exercise moderation.

With 5 minutes of Googling, I can find similar analogues to argue that so-called "organic" or natural food is bad or even toxic for you:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogss... http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/03/eating-organic-may-be...

In general - I think modern agriculture and food techniques have been a boon for humanity - they've given us safe, large-scale food production to feed the masses. We've eradicated pests/diseases from our crops, and also engineered our crops to be more pest/disease resistant, have higher-yields and taste better. So we've been "processing" food for a long time. And we've moved from salting/drying things, to more modern preservation techniques, that preserve the nutritional content and taste of our food as well, and prolong shelf-life and packability of foodstuffs.

But of course, then we have modern inventions like the Twinkie, or the <insert junk food of choice>. I honestly hope people aren't arguing these are health foods. But if you argue that "processed" foods are bad, because they also gave us the Twinkie - well, you're basically throwing out all the added benefits (convenience, low-cost, shelf-life) of modern foods.

Even the fresh fruits/vegetables we buy are quite "processed" - I actually prefer this to so-called organic food-stuffs, because I know the food safety regulations around your supermarket fruit/vegetables are so much stricter than for organic farms. And I'm also fine with buying a pre-packaged salad in a sealed plastic bag, even though it's processed, because I know it was probably washed by machine, and they have health and safety checks in the processing pipeline, to ensure pathogens are at acceptable levels. (although I do confess to occasionally rinsing them again, for possibly irrational reasons).

And calling "rule of thumb" black and white indicates that you aren't familiar with the typical usage of the term, which is the opposite of "black and white".

If you can't conceive of the concept of processing as being a spectrum of more or less transformation of the initial food item, then there isn't any reason to further this discussion. If you think that cleaning lettuce is the same as using a bioreactor to change the chemical structure of a food, you are just plain wrong.

You said:

> I'm of the exact same dietary philosophy as yourself. I derived it through reading and experimentation before paleo was even a thing, as it appears Jack Lalanne did as well. Most people who attack a simple sensible diet like this are really just exposing their own insecurities and desire to not give up the crap they injest themselves.

> a good rule of thumb is that the less processed a food is, the more likely it is to be better for you".

The things you have just named are processing - so it may make more sense if you actual clarify what exactly it is you are against?

What does it mean for a food to be "less" processed, then?

It's like trying to fight an add tag line with logic, it just doesn't make sense. We all know "number one in stuff" is not to be taken as is.

Still, if you do avoid industrialy processed food, you usually see your health improved tremendously.

TL;DR: don't be that guy : https://encrypted.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source...

The intent, I'm sure, is to advise people to avoid foods that have undergone an industrialized food-preparation process, to produce a shelf-stable product that can be shipped in cardboard boxes. As an aggregate, those foods are overwhelmingly prepared according to USDA and FDA recommendations, resulting in the very common replacement of fats with simple carbohydrates, addition of preservatives, and the use of additional additives to improve flavor and texture.

That maxim is to be applied in the grocery store, while looking at the product in your hand. If it's a bag of potato chips, you look at it and think, "how is this made?" Then you are supposed to remove the boiling in oil and the slicing, and buy raw, whole potatoes instead. If it's a package of Oreos, you're supposed to read the ingredients, be horrified at the claim that it is food, and perhaps buy a nice, crisp apple instead.

You're not going to achieve optimal nutrition with sound-bite-sized dietary advice, but if there isn't a lot of space left in your brain's on-die cache, it could help to avoid making the most horrible dietary decisions. But only if it is good bite-sized advice.

If you decide to only eat "natural" foods, you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And also, you may have a bizarre and nonsensical concept of what is "natural". But it will probably stop you from eating the foods most highly suspected of causing health problems, such as those containing trans-fats, fructose, or poor Na:K or Ca:Mg proportions.

http://www.gbhealthwatch.com/Trait-Salt-Sensitivity.php

Late life heart disease probably hasn't been a major factor in our evolution, but it's easy to sketch out how a lifetime of dietary choices that encouraged high blood pressure would have some impact in the last years.

Also, modern food production is not an unqualified great thing.

Too simplistically: We consumers are harmed when optimal food production techniques drive nutrition policy, vs human nutritional needs guiding food production.

Over use of HFCS, soya, whey, etc has caused a great deal of human disease. It's now an expensive public health issue.

What may cause you (intellectual) discomfort is when the woo-woos conflate health and environmental issues. Again, filters.

And please remember that everyone's just trying to move forward best as they can. My mother also imparts some terrible, well intentioned advice. But it's not like I'm going to fix her misunderstandings. I just try to guide best as I can and lead by example.

The problem is that people are ignorant with regards to the purpose and effects of various food additives/ingredients, so they just take the simplified stance "more ingredients = bad" rather than do a little research. As a heuristic it might be fairly functional (you can still eat unhealthily without processed foods though), but it means you're going to spend a lot of time preparing food and you're missing out on the opportunity for engineered superfoods.

Cod liver oil comes to mind ...

If you consider it as a heuristic instead of taking it literally, your objection about artificial selection of produce is also more or less irrelevant. Man had a hand in shaping those plants' current genome, but if we disappeared tomorrow nature would keep making (most of) them. It's still easy to distinguish from, say, donuts and still useful as a heuristic.

One quick thing I would add is, "NO" nature would not keep making them. It is only our direct action that props up these artificially selected species (q.v., hybrids that require us to actively produce them, or your favorite variety of apple which is a clone of some great-grandparent tree or the fact that these crops would not compete well with other plants because we've selected them for their food production, not overall hardiness. They'd be out competed. They put too much of their energy into producing stuff that doesn't optimally help produce a new generation, and thus require our tending).

Your statement is a bit like saying "if we disappeared tomorrow nature would keep making sheep." Probably not (at least medium term). Sheep generally require our protection to avoid being killed. It probably wouldn't take long for a predator species to take hold in a given area and kill them all.

Sure, the banana is a selectively bred, sterile monocrop but the candy is made of 20 ingredients, resembling nothing found in nature in composition and nutrition.

Simplistic heuristics have failed hard before in nutrition, so why do we keep repeating the new ones?

The only one that makes any sense is "Eat food, not too much, and mostly fruit and veg".

Michael Pollan, who promoted (and possibly introduced) that slogan in his book In Defense of Food, goes on to explain that "Eat food" means more specifically "don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food" (p. 148). In short, he agrees exactly with Jack Lalanne: avoid processed foods.

I think a better heuristic, is "Just eat what your great-grandma ate". Or avoid the middle of the supermarket as much as possible.

Simply eating more fat and less sugar/carbs, I have lost 10+ pounds and feel much better. These nutrition fads have done more harm than good. My mother switched from butter to Crisco when I was a kid, then she banned salt from the house, and bought (high sugare, low fat) snack wells for us. All based on poor/pseudo science.

The diabetes and obesity are modern problems caused by a diet that our bodies haven't evolved to handle.

Unfortunately that's not always possible as we have selectively bred over time for appearance, size and/or sugar content in our fruits, vegetables and even meat at the expense of macro- and micronutrients.

We have also begun overly sanitizing our foods, pasteurizing everything and adding antibiotics to the detriment out our gut microbiome.

In many cases the food our great grandmas ate doesn't exist anymore.

I like that!

I had some friends over for a small dinner party a few weeks back. One of them was helping me in the kitchen butter some sour dough bread. Mid-way through she stopped agog just staring. I looked to where her eyes were staring and realized she was shocked at how much butter I was smearing on each slice of bread.

I'm active and believe in eating a lot of natural fats, but I realized that even young adults subscribe to the demonization of saturated fat. (I might also be a little too inclined to eat butter and coconut oil - so moderation - as always is important if we're to not alienate everybody).

Snarky "lead paint?" aside, this only really works if you're also as active as great-grandma was. Chances are she got a lot more exercise than we modern folk do.

"There has been no commensurate decline in physical activity, in either country – in the UK, exercise levels have increased over the last 20 years."

Sure, exercise is important, but a potential lack of it is not the problem. The most significant way you can interact with you body is through the food/drink you put in your mouth.

Food has changed so much over the past few decades that most people no longer eat food but instead consume food like products.

In a natural environment, the only real sources of fructose are either fiber-heavy (most fruits) or somewhat rare (honey, berries).

Fructose is bad. It's certainly something that should be eaten in moderation.

Your food is not being engineered to be better for you. It's being engineered to be cheaper and easier to produce and sell. There are trade-offs.

If you consume 10 cans of coke a day, and you're over your maintenance caloric intake by 1000 calories daily. guess what? you'll get fat and probably not be healthy. if you overconsume sweet potatoes by 1000 calories over your maintenance intake daily. guess what? you'll get fat and probably not be healthy.

Yeah it does come across as too simple. I've heard a variation of it, also attributed to Lalane, that says, "If it comes in a wrapper, don't eat it." The idea is that if it's in a wrapper, it has preservatives added, and also sugar added to make it taste good.

In any case, it seems people love attributing quotes to Lalane!

I think people trying to give nutritional advice should just list the actual categories of food they're referring to, rather than trying to get cute. If you want to say "eat unprocessed fruit, vegetables, and meat, and avoid the rest" then just say that. To me, whenever I see somebody trying to get clever with their wording, it just comes off as moralizing. It feels like either "you should know this man-made stuff is bad for you, you idiot" or "I'm better than you because my food is 'natural.'"

Sucrose = glucose + fructose. Glucose good, fructose bad. Fiber in fruit prevents uptake of fructose. Which is why orange is okay, orange juice bad. A pretty good example of Lalanne's messaging.

No. See sibling responses. I'm not being pedantic, I'm trying to point out natural != good. Processing != bad either. Cooking is processing, and is a good thing, most of the time. I mentioned preservatives in a sibling reply, again generally a good thing. For example, the "no preservatives" crowd often have been very selective in the data they've looked at. That's all. Question assumptions about what's is and isn't bad for you. (And there is plenty of refinement and such that isn't good for you--don't get me wrong).

It basically posits that ALL sugar, from fructose, to organic brown sugar to high fructose corn syrup is broken down to the same basic molecule: glucose.

Even white rice, potatoes and bread break down similarly. It was sobering viewing and highly recommended. The 5:2 diet proponents also suggest the same thing from their research - that natural sugars are no better than unnatural sugars (at least according to the doc).

The idea that more natural foods are generally healthier than less natural foods is based mainly on inductive reasoning, eg. breast milk vs baby formula, grass fed cattle vs grain and animal protien fed cattle, vitamins in plants vs vitamins in tablets, animal welfare limits vs antibiotics and growth stimulants etc